Conventionally, in order to acquire information on a printing apparatus connected to a network, a printing apparatus management tool or the like is used to search for a printing apparatus on the network.
An example of the search method is a broadcast search method of embedding a search condition in a broadcast packet and listing responding printing apparatuses. Another example is a method of listing, by multicast search using SLP (Service Location Protocol), printing apparatuses which support a specific service type.
According to these methods, when the user wants to know information such as the IP address of a nearest printing apparatus in executing search for a printing apparatus (for example, when the user is to acquire information on the IP address of a printing apparatus that is necessary to create a TCP/IP port for use in installing a printer driver), a printing apparatus management utility searches for a printing apparatus. In this search, even information on an unnecessary printing apparatus on the network is detected, and the user must find out necessary information (e.g., the IP address of the printing apparatus) from the pieces of detected information.
There is also proposed a method of operating the local panel of a printing apparatus to execute status print or the like, and acquiring information such as the IP address of the printing apparatus. According to this method, the user must perform a panel operation for each printing apparatus. The menu layout on the local panel may change between models of printing apparatuses, and the status print operation itself is often cumbersome for users except one who is familiar with the operation.
As a method of providing printing apparatus information collected in the above way, there is proposed a method of displaying the function icons of devices on the device list display, enabling rearrangement and extraction, and providing a device list for each function to the user, so as to allow the user to easily select a device in terms of the device function (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-110375).
However, this printing apparatus information providing method does not display only a desired device designated by the user, and the user must find out the desired device from a plurality of displayed devices.